Of Twinleaf Town
by Fluitare
Summary: She doesn't want to be a Trainer anymore, a Champion, a wanderer. She doesn't want to be herself. There is nothing left for her but an empty Pokemon League that she has defeated a thousand times before, and tired faces, and sterile white corridors between rooms.


**Of Twinleaf Town**

She lands on the very tips of her boots, running lightly for perhaps a pace and a half to keep from falling. The dirty brown snow has not been cleared from the path, and Pearl picks her way through it, towards the building with its high, gothic spires and arching doorways.

She takes a Pokeball from her belt, and presses the white button with gloved fingers. Her Crobat, the one who dropped her neatly in front of the icy waterfall just moments ago, vanishes in a flash of light.

Frozen, dead grass crunches under her boots, and on either side of the building she can just see the fake plastic flowers under the layer of snow.

* * *

Inside, there are five people. Pearl knows and does not know them all.

The girl in the red-brown jumpsuit, with dark hair dyed greenish by chlorine, is waiting for something. Or someone. Pearl thinks perhaps it is the boy she saw on Victory Road who did not challenge her battle, but hurried on, as if someone were waiting for him. She assumes that it is the trainer whose the mug of tepid something is always sitting on the table, no matter how many times she comes in.

There are the twins that run the Pokemart, their faces drawn and lined with identical expressions of worry. She has bought some items from them, rarer varieties of Pokeballs, but customers here on the high plateau are few, and those who make it past Victory Road have little money.

Nurse Joy is the only one whose name she knows, and that is only because they are all named Joy. The color on her face is washed out by white powder, and her mouth is painted with a smear of bright-red lipstick. Her black hair didn't take the pink hair dye well - it looks dull, and the dark roots are clearly visible. Pearl doesn't heal her Pokemon here, because the nurse smells of cigarettes and cheap perfume. She flies to Jubilife, where the new, naive trainers gather, the ones who have not yet learned what is in the world. In Jubilife, the Joy is young and pretty, with white-blonde hair that becomes bright pink and a ready smile.

Last is the guard, the one who dared to ask to see her badges. As if he didn't know perfectly well that she'd had to have her badges to climb the steep waterfall. Now, he knows better, and he moves aside as she approaches. The doors, too, glide apart before her, and she steps into the first dusty hall of the Pokemon League.

* * *

Her footsteps echo dully as she moves up and through long white corridors and blue rising platforms. Dust motes spin through the air, rising and falling on invisible currents.

Aaron is waiting for her, puppyish and still a little hopeful that he can win, even after all this time.

Pearl doesn't bother to greet him, only stands, impatient but resigned, through his rehearsed speech. When he's done, she summons Crobat, who hovers between them. Her beloved Crobat, her first Pokemon, knows this place and this opponent. Pearl barely even goes through the motions, only raising a finger slightly whenever Crobat stops expectantly. The battle is short and painless, far more Crobat's fight than hers. She allows Aaron another speech, and moves on to Bertha.

* * *

Bertha tries to act old and wise, with a tendency to speak in rhymed couplets. What effect she tries to get with this, Pearl doesn't know, and doesn't care.

Another single Pokemon, this time her Milotic. Milotic is slightly younger than Crobat, still powerful but not quite as able to read Pearl's thoughts. In deference to this, Pearl gives her commands verbally, and wins in precisely five attacks.

There are more sterile corridors, windowless and empty.

* * *

Flint always mentions Volkner, whom she crushed efficiently and methodically. Somehow, this was supposed to have given him the will to fight once more.

He is the opposite of her clean, spare fighting style. Flint is showy and rash, and he likes explosions. Pearl doesn't like anything much.

She calls Milotic again, and Milotic uses Surf three times. Infernape knocks out Lopunny, and Jolteon blasts Drifblim. It is the standard way of things.

Flint gives his little spiel about not expecting to lose, but there is a bitter irony in his tone, and it speak more truth than all his empty words. The Elite Four all have different ways of expressing their hopeless knowledge that Pearl will always win, and Flint's is the most honest. Well, perhaps not _honest_. Is it lying if everyone involved knows it to be a lie?

* * *

Lucian is her favorite, if an opponent can be called any such thing. Weavile for his Psychic Pokemon, Crobat for his Medicham, and Infernape again for Bronzong. Lucian carefully does not mention winning, and he is as methodical as she. She smiles a little at the end, and asks about his book. He warns her, as always, that the Champion is far more powerful than the Elite Four.

Pearl smiles a slight, mocking smile at this, and she wears her smile to the door of the Champion's room.

Cynthia is no more of a challenge than the Elite Four. Pearl shifts her Pokemon merely for convenience - Crobat alone could defeat Cynthia's team, but it would take a few minutes longer, and more work on Pearl's part.

Cynthia's Roserade is last, and Pearl calls Crobat again. One swift slash is all it takes, and the flowery Pokemon falls to the floor. Crobat keens, high and piercing, on the very upper edges of her hearing.

The Footstep Man tells her that Crobat loves her. He is usually hesitant about Pokemon who leave no footsteps, and he hedges his evaluations of Milotic, but about Crobat he is unequivocal. Crobat loves her.

Cynthia has begun to talk, telling Pearl that she is now Sinnoh's newest Champion.

"Can I stay here?" Pearl says suddenly. She doesn't know why she wants to stay in this dusty building of ghosts, but she is suddenly tired of not having anywhere to call her own.

Cynthia ignores her.

When Professor Rowan arrives, Pearl tries again to claim her right to remain as champion, but the two talk right over her, in the same stiff lines as always, as if she hasn't spoken.

After her Pokemon are recorded, Pearl will wake up in the upper room of her mother's house. She will fly away immediately, not wanting to stay. She will probably fly here once more. The waiting green-haired girl, the Nurse Joy, the shopkeepers and the guard, they are the closest she has to family. She has not spent a night in her mother's house since she was nine years old.

She has spent three years on the road, the last six months spent flying aimlessly from place to place. She is just thirteen, still hardly more than a child, but weary of life.

She has been tired, so achingly tired. Her journey gave her Pokemon, badges, money, prestige... everything. But all things have a price, and the long years have taken their blood price. Time has not yet stolen her youth, but it has taken something. Someone.

She does not visit Sandgem any more.

She doesn't want to be Pearl any more.

Somewhere, in the depths of the too-bright lights and the dusty corridors and the empty halls, there is a promise.

Somewhere here, she can lose Pearl of Twinleaf Town, and become just one more Champion, just another empty face.


End file.
